Upon the whole, this class of Frenchmen who may be called moderates, or constitutionalists, and who contained the great bulk of the men of property, substance, and education, hoped well of the King's government. His good sense, humanity, love of justice, moderation, and other valuable qualities, recommended him to their esteem, and they thought his restoration might be considered as the guarantee of a lasting peace with the other nations of Europe. But they dreaded and deprecated that counter revolutionary reaction, as the established phrase was, which was regarded as the object of the princes of the blood, the nobility, and the clergy. The property of many of the constitutionalists was vested in national domains, and they watched with doubt and fear every step which the emigrant nobility and clergy seemed disposed to take for recovery of their former rights.

On this subject the moderate party were sensitively jealous, and the proceedings which took place in the Chamber of Deputies threw striking light on the state of the public mind. We must, therefore, turn the reader's attention in that direction.

A petty riot, concerning precedence, had arisen in a church called Durnac, between the seigneur of the parish, and the mayor of the commune. The mayor brought the affair before the Chamber of Deputies by a violent petition, in which he generalized his complaint against the whole body of emigrants, whom he accused of desiring to place themselves above the constituted authorities, and to treat France as a conquered country. The Chamber, 20th November, 1814, treated the language of the petition as calumnious, and the squabble as unworthy of their notice. But the debate called forth expressions which intimated a suspicion that there existed a dark and secret system, which tended to sow the seeds of discord and anarchy among the citizens, and to resuscitate pretensions incompatible with the laws. "It was," said the member⁷⁸ who made this statement, "important to impress every class of Frenchmen with the great idea, that there was no safety for France, for the King, for every member of society, but in the maintenance of those constitutional principles on which were founded the laws for protecting the whole."

EMIGRANT-CLAIMS

The claims of the emigrants for restoration of their forfeited property, were, abstractedly, as just and indubitable as that of the King to the throne. But the political considerations in which they were involved, rendered any general attempt to enforce those claims the sure signal of civil war; a civil war almost certain to end in a second expatriation, both of the royal family and their followers. In this dilemma, government seems to have looked anxiously for some means of compromise which might afford relief to the emigrants, without innovating on that article of the charter which ratified the sale of national domains. M. Ferrand brought forward in the Chamber of Delegates, a motion [Dec. 3] for the restoration of such estates of emigrants as yet remained unsold. But this involved a question respecting the rights of the much more numerous class whose property had been seized upon by the state, and disposed of to third parties, to whom it was guaranteed by the charter. Since these gentlemen could not be restored ex jure, to their estates, as was proposed towards their more fortunate brethren, they had at least a title to the price which had been surrogated in place of the property, of which price the nation had still possession.

These proposals called forward M. Durbach, who charged Ferrand with the fatal purpose of opening the door on the vast subject of national domains. "Already," continued the orator, "the two extremities of the kingdom have resounded with the words of the minister, as with the claps which precede the thunderbolt. The effect which they have produced has been so rapid and so general, that all civil transactions have been at once suspended. A general distrust and excessive fear have caused a stagnation, the effects of which even the royal treasury has felt. The proprietors of national property can no longer sell or mortgage their estates. They are suddenly reduced to poverty in the very bosom of wealth. Whence arises this calamity? The cause of it is the declaration of the minister, that the property they possess does not legally belong to them. For this is, in fact, the consequence of his assertion, that 'the law recognises in the emigrants a right to property which always existed.'"

The celebrated Maréchal Macdonald, a friend at once of monarchy and freedom, of France and the Bourbons, undertook to bring forward a plan for satisfying the emigrants, as far as the condition of the nation permitted; and giving, at the same time, some indemnity for the pensions assigned by Buonaparte to his veteran soldiers, which, during his reign, had been paid from countries beyond the verge of France, until after the retreat from Moscow, when they ceased to be paid at all. The maréchal's statement of the extent of the sale of the national domains, shows how formidable the task of undoing that extensive transference of property must necessarily have been; the number of persons directly or indirectly interested in the question of their security, amounting to nine or ten millions. "Against this Colossus," continued the maréchal, "whose height the eye cannot measure, some impotent efforts would affect to direct themselves; but the wisdom of the King has foreseen this danger, even for the sake of those imprudent persons who might have exposed themselves to it." He proceeded, in a very eloquent strain, to eulogize the conduct of the emigrants, to express respect for their persons, compassion for their misfortunes, honour for their fidelity, and proceeded to observe, that the existence of these old proprietors, as having claims on the estates which had been acquired by others, placed them in a situation which ought not to exist. He therefore proposed that the nation should satisfy the claims of these unfortunate gentlemen, if not in full, at least upon such terms of composition as had been applied to other national obligations. Upon this footing, he calculated that an annuity of twelve millions of livres yearly, would pay off the claims of the various emigrants of all descriptions. He next drew a picture of the distressed veteran soldiers; pensioners of the state who had been reduced to distress by the discontinuance of their pensions, bought with their blood in a thousand battles. Three millions more of livres he computed as necessary to discharge this sacred obligation.⁷⁹

There was wisdom, manliness, and generosity in the plan of Maréchal Macdonald; and, could it have been carried into decisive execution, it would have greatly appeased the fears and jealousies of the proprietors of national domains, and shown an impartiality betwixt the claims of the emigrants and those of the army, which ought to have conciliated both. Unhappily, funds were awanting, and the royal government, so far from being able to incur a new expense of fifteen millions yearly, was not in a condition to discharge the various demands upon them, without continuing the oppressive tax of Les droits réunis.

It is, indeed, on the subject of finance and taxation, that almost all revolutions among civilized nations have been found to hinge; and there is scarce any judging how long actual oppression may be endured, so long as it spares the purse of individuals, or how early a heavy tax, even for the most necessary objects, will excite insurrection. Without the heavy taxation of the Spaniards, the Dutch would scarcely have rebelled against them; it was imposts which fired the blood of the Swiss against the Austrians; without the stamp-act the American Revolution might have been long postponed; and but for the disorder of the French finances, Louis XVI. need never have summoned together the National Assembly. France was now again agitated by one of those fever fits, which arise from the sensitiveness of the subject's purse.

FRENCH FINANCE

A report on the state of the public finances, by the Abbé de Montesquieu, had given a singular instance of Buonaparte's deceptive policy. Annual expositions of national receipt and expenditure had been periodically published since he assumed the reins of government, which were, to outward appearance, unchallengeably accurate; and as they seemed to balance each other, afforded the fair prospect that, the revenues of the state being realized, the expenses could not fall into arrear. But in reality, a number of extraordinary expenses were withheld from the view of the public, while, on the other hand, the produce of the taxes was over-estimated. Thus the two budgets of 1812, and 1813, upon close examination, exhibited a deficit of upwards of 312 millions of livres,⁸⁰ or thirteen millions sterling. Buonaparte was not ignorant of this fact, but concealed it from the eyes of the nation, in hopes of replacing it, as in his more successful days, by foreign tribute, and, in the meantime, supplied himself by the anticipation of other funds; as an unfaithful book-keeper makes up a plausible balance to meet the eye of his master, and covers his peculations by his dexterity in the use of ciphers. Upon the whole, the debts of France appeared to have increased in the course of thirteen years to the extent of 1,645,469,000 francs, or more than sixty-eight millions and a half of sterling money.

These financial involvements accorded ill with the accomplishment of an unfortunate and hasty promise of Monsieur,⁸¹ that the severe and pressing taxes called les droits réunis should be abolished, which had been made when he first entered France, and while, betwixt hope and despair, he essayed every inducement for the purpose of drawing adherents to the royal cause. On the other hand, the King, upon ascending the throne, had engaged himself, with perhaps too much latitude, to pay all the engagements which the state had contracted under the preceding government. To redeem both these pledges was impossible, for without continuing this very obnoxious and oppressive tax, the crown could not have the means of discharging the national debt. A plan was in vain proposed by Jalabert to replace this oppressive excise by a duty on wines; the motion was referred to a committee of the Chamber of Representatives, but the substitution seems to have been found impossible. Louis naturally made the promise of his brother give way to his own more deliberate engagement. But it is not the less true, that by continuing to levy les droits réunis, many, not otherwise disinclined to the royal government than as it affected their purses, were enabled to charge the King with breach of faith towards his subjects, and would listen to no defence upon a topic on which few people are disposed to hear reason against their own interest.

THE PRESS

There remained yet another subject of alarm and dread, to excite the minds not only of those who were desirous of revolution, or, according to the Roman phrase, cupidi novarum rerum; but of others, who, devotedly attached to the welfare of France, desired to see her enjoy, under the sway of a legitimate monarch, the exercise of national liberty. They had the misfortune to see that liberty attacked in the point where it is most sensitive, namely, by imposing restraints upon the public press.

Buonaparte had made it part of his system to keep this powerful engine in his own iron hand, well aware that his system of despotism could not have subsisted for six months, if his actions had been exposed to the censure of the public, and his statements to contradiction and to argument. The Bourbons having unloosed the chain by which the liberty of the press was confined, the spirit of literary and political controversy rushed out with such demoniacal violence, as astonished and terrified those who had released it from confinement. The quantity of furious abuse poured out against the Bourbons, might have authorised the authors to use the words of Caliban —

 
"You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is – I know how to curse."⁸²
 

Eager to repress the spirit which displayed itself so unequivocally, a motion was made on the 4th of July, 1814,⁸³ for establishing a censorship upon pamphlets under a certain length, and placing all journals and newspapers under the direction of government.

This important subject was discussed with great manliness and talent in the Assembly; but it is one of the many political maxims which the British receive as theorems, that, without absolute freedom of the public press (to be exercised always on the peril of such as misuse it,) there can neither be enlightened patriotism nor liberal discussion; and that, although the forms of a free constitution may be preserved where this liberty is restricted, they will soon fail to have the necessary beneficial effects in protecting the rights of the community and the safety of individuals. The liberty of the press affords a channel through which the injured may challenge his oppressor at the bar of the nation; it is the means by which public men may, in case of misconduct, be arraigned before their own and succeeding ages; it is the only mode in which bold and undisguised truth can press its way into the cabinets of monarchs; and it is the privilege, by means of which he, who vainly lifts his voice against the corruptions or prejudices of his own time, may leave his counsels upon record as a legacy to impartial posterity. The cruelty which would deafen the ear and extinguish the sight of an individual, resembles, in some similar degree, his guilt, who, by restricting the freedom of the press, would reduce a nation to the deafness of prejudice, and the blindness of ignorance. The downfall of this species of freedom, as it is the first symptom of the decay of national liberty, has been in all ages followed by its total destruction, and it may be justly pronounced that they cannot exist separately; or, as the elegiac poet has said of his hero and the country to which he belonged —

 
"Ille tibi superesse negat; tu non potes illi."
 

We must own, at the same time, that as no good comes to us unmixed with evil, the unlimited freedom of the press is attended with obvious inconveniencies, which, when a nation is in a certain state of excitation, render the exercise of it peculiarly dangerous. This is especially the case when a people, as then in France, are suddenly released from a state of bondage, and disposed, "like youthful colts broke loose," to make the most extravagant use of their liberty. With minds unprepared for discussion; with that degree of political misinformation which has done this age more dire mischief than absolute ignorance itself could have effected; subject to be influenced by the dashing pamphleteer, who soothes their prevailing passions, as the orations of their popular demagogues soothed those of the Athenians – it has been the opinion of many statesmen, that to withhold from such a nation the freedom of the press, is a measure justifiable alike by reason and necessity. "We proportion," say these reasoners, "liberty to the power of enjoying it. The considerate and the peaceful we suffer to walk at liberty, and armed, if their occasions require it; but we restrain the child, we withhold weapons from the ruffian, and we fetter the maniac. Why, therefore," they ask, "should a nation, when in a state of fever, be supplied, without restriction, with the indulgences which must necessarily increase the disorder?" Our answer is ready – that, granting the abuse of the liberty of the press to exist in the most fearful latitude (and we need not look to France for examples,) the advantages derived from it are so inestimable, that, to deprive us of them, would be as if an architect should shut up the windows which supply light and air to a mansion, because a certain proportion of cold, and perhaps of rain, may force their way in at the aperture. Besides, we acknowledge ourselves peculiarly jealous of the sentiments of the members of every government on this delicate subject. Their situation renders them doubtful friends to a privilege, through which alone they can be rendered amenable to the public for the abuse of their power, and through which also they often see their just and temperate exercise of authority maligned and misconstrued. To princes, also, the license of the press is, for many reasons distasteful. To put it under regulation, seems easy and desirable, and the hardship on the community not greater (in their account) than the enforcing of decent respect and subordination – of the sort of etiquette, in short, which is established in all courts, and which forbids the saving, under any pretext, what may be rude or disagreeable to a sovereign, or even unpleasing to be heard. Under these circumstances, and in the present state of France, men rather regretted than wondered that the ministers of Louis XVIII. were disposed to place restrictions on the freedom of the press, or that they effected their purpose of placing the light of nations under a censorial bushel.